


in the pursuit of cromch

by catpoop



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Universe, Crack, Domestic, Gen, donna worries about his health, kids dont do any of this, ten has an oral fixation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21674266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: 5 times Donna thinks about the Doctor's eating habits, and 1 time she refuses to even consider the idea
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	in the pursuit of cromch

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this after a convo w alittlewrath  
> its not the greatest thing ive ever written, but it... _is_ written

Donna fancies the TARDIS quite a kitted-out ship. Like the campervan of her childhood dreams, or the transportation her adult self can hardly imagine, not when she’s crammed into a metal tube with a million other commuters. What she’s saying, Donna decides, is that the TARDIS has a great kitchen. For a wooden box whose main room is a bewildering monstrosity of metal bits and bobs, the kitchen is really above expectations. 

Currently, she’s letting her pea and ham soup simmer on the fire while she cuts slices of crusty bread, ready to toast. The Doctor has a recognisable and functioning toaster in the labyrinth of his other kitchen appliances – gather that! She ladles herself a bowl of lunch, and sits down to eat. 

The table is quite a large one, standing proudly at the centre of the room and flanked by adjustable, ergonomic (unlike _any_ of the office chairs she’s sat in) seats. Both of these details, while prominent, suggest that something is lacking from the scene – perhaps a second person at the table, or a third.

Donna has long gotten used to the Doctor’s lack of regular schedule, but she wonders, once again, if he might not just sit down and eat lunch with her sometime. The last time she had heard him bustling about in the kitchen, it had been 4am in the morning. Reminded by her then half-asleep feelings of concern, Donna pays the Doctor a visit after lunch.

He is, predictably, within the private room of his. It’s some kind of study, or workshop – Donna can’t begin to make heads or tails of anything within that cluttered room, let alone give a name to any of it.

The Doctor pulls some kind of woollen tube off his head upon her knocking and turns around, beaming. “Donna!”

“Doctor, I was just wondering…” she begins casually, pretending that she’s here for casual conversation and not an interrogation. “When was the last time you ate?”

The Doctor squints in thought, pulling his brow up, then down, then wiggling his lips from left to right. She stays silent, for the minute or so it takes him to come up with an answer. That already isn’t the best of signs.

“Ah – five, no, _six_ days ago?” He nods. “Yeah. Why?”

Donna doesn’t deign him with a response. She stares at a spot beside his head for a moment, blinks a few times in disbelief, and walks back out of the room. 

The Doctor shrugs and replaces his headpiece.

Despite her usual qualms about sleeping in unfamiliar beds, the bedroom the Doctor has provided for her has a surprisingly comfortable bed. She can crawl in and fall asleep in a blink of an eye, and the blankets are the perfect amount of warm. Of course, there’s one thing her miraculous bed can’t provide – and that’s relief from the pressure on her bladder. Bracing herself from the chill in the room, Donna slips out of bed and stumbles blearily to the nearest bathroom.

However, as the TARDIS has only the one bathroom, Donna’s path down the corridor takes her past the living area, scientific research room, and kitchen. The first two are pitch dark, as expected at this time of night, but from the kitchen doorway comes a bright halo of light, far harsher than the natural nighttime lighting overhead.

The Doctor, up for a 2am snack, evidently

She doesn’t linger on the thought, or on the stunning view of Theta Eridani A-5 outside the window she walks past, not when the bathroom is so close – and her bed just a few more steps away.

So she doesn’t mean to pause by the lit doorway a second later, when the loudest _‘crunch!’_ she’s ever heard comes echoing out. She frowns at the lanky silhouette of the Doctor within, dismisses the strange noise, and hurries off to the bathroom.

She doesn’t hear it again, on her way back.

“I’m hungry.” The Doctor blurts one evening. Donna doesn’t look up from her book.

“What’s that?” She has a steaming mug of tea in one hand, and an enthralling paperback in the other, and nothing could disturb this moment of peace. Not even the Doctor pacing furiously around the room.

“I think,” he thinks aloud, “I’m going to go to a supermarket.”

“Oh, alright,” Donna mumbles.

“I’m going to buy food.” He declares to the room at large, and Donna nods again, taking a sip of her tea. The main character is making headway on the serial killer case of hers, and Donna thinks she might know whodunnit. And there’s only one way to find out – she turns the page.

Donna doesn’t look up until she hears the door to the TARDIS slam shut, and it takes a moment to remember the Doctor’s impassioned speech. _Supermarket_ …

 _So he does eat!_ She rejoices. And human food, apparently. But her curiosity isn’t enough to draw her away from the book for long, and not a moment later, Donna is submerged once more in the thrilling world of Evelina, private investigator.

She has finished her tea by the time the Doctor returns, carrying two bulging canvas bags. Try as she might, she can’t make out the contents within.

“So what does a Timelord like yourself eat, then?” She asks.

The Doctor shrugs, and the two bags sway precariously from his shoulders. “Nothing special. Human food, you know.

Donna squints from her spot in the armchair as the Doctor waddles towards the kitchen. “‘Human food,’ you say? Sounds plenty suspicious to me.”

“You ought to ask your local Waitrose exactly what they’re selling, then.” The Doctor quips, and disappears out of the room.

The Doctor has hooked up one of their screens to the local Phiinien broadcast, and Donna, curious, perches in the seat opposite to watch the many-limbed creature speak to its audience. The TARDIS can translate speech, but that doesn’t always make understanding any easier. She peers at the strange garment the alien is wearing, studies the backdrop it is crawling in front of, and concludes that the broadcast is either a political speech or a stand-up sketch. The English words coming from the speaker don’t offer any clarification.

_And so I… take the shellfish –_

“Enjoying it?” The Doctor pops up beside her.

Donna isn’t sure how to answer. “I… guess?”

“It’s a bit hard to follow at first,” he explains, sitting down next to her, “but otherwise it’s hilarious.”

“Oh.”

The couch they are sharing has more than enough room for three, but Donna can feel the Doctor shifting around on the spot as clear as day. He kicks his feet up, swings them back down, then crosses and uncrosses them. 

She’s fully expecting it when, a minute later, he stands back up in one smooth motion.

“Do you want a snack?”

“I –” Maybe this kind of entertainment is the kind that calls for popcorn. She hopes it is. “Sure.”

“Alrighty.” And then he trots off, footsteps loud on the kitchen floor, and the snick of the fridge opening and closing audible despite the broadcast continuing to play.

 _I see the Erzywk representative, and I tell him –_

The audience bursts into raucous laughter, and Donna can’t help but laugh along as well. She idly waits to hear the footsteps returning, and shrugs when she doesn’t. _Maybe he’s making tea…_

She forgets all about the Doctor until a half hour later, when the Phiinien had concluded an unexpectedly raunchy and somewhat heart-wrenching tale about his family, five husbands, and dozen-or-so in-laws. Probably not a political speech.

Standing up, Donna stretches her legs and wanders over to the kitchen, more bemused than annoyed to find it empty. The Doctor warbles in the distance, singing to himself. She puts the empty egg carton on the counter into the recycling, and heads off to interrogate him.

The situation is growing dire, and Donna can’t seem to catch a breath, and the Doctor’s rapid-fire muttering isn’t helping the tension. Not too surprisingly, it’s once more the human race at stake. Donna would like to think she’s grown used to this by now, but the promise of extinction is never well-received.

“What do we do, Doctor?” She asks once more, uselessly, and the Doctor can only continue to mutter.

“How am _I_ supposed to stop this?” He tugs at his hair. “I don’t speak Lebanese, nor do I own a hygromechanomognomanometer. Would you have one of those lying around, Donna?” The Doctor stares at her with a panicked look in his eyes and she shakes her head.

“I don’t think so!”

“God,” he moans, letting his hands fall to his side. They suddenly start up a frantic dance of their own, patting furiously at his coat and tugging at pockets, and Donna watches, almost entranced. He may look like a madman, but in this moment he looks like a madman getting close to solving the case. 

“What are you looking for?” She cries. “Do you –”

He pulls out an egg, from within one of many dozen pockets lining that coat of his.

She feels her glimmer of hope spark, then smoulder in silent confusion. “Is that – is that the answer?”

The Doctor shoots her a look. “What? Oh no, of course not. This is just to keep my brain going.”

Donna watches, utterly aghast, as the Doctor then proceeds to toss the egg towards his mouth and gobble it up with a great crunch. It’s the same horrific noise she heard that night.

She gapes. “You – what – did you just… Did you _just_ – ?”

Ignoring her, the Doctor wipes his mouth on his sleeve and walks away. “Come on, I think I know who might be able to help.”

(+1)

After that inexplicable occurrence, Donna has grown more than wary of the Doctor and whatever nonsense he is making out of the concept of eating. She had tried asking about it, both indirectly and directly, but it turns out that a concentration span of a minute, maximum, makes it very easy to avoid questions you don’t want to answer. The Doctor wanders out of the room, and Donna hears a faint crunching. She tunes it out.

Of course, this doesn’t mean she doesn’t still care for the Doctor, and so it is with a sizeable amount of fear that she watches as he dashes into the room one day, clutching a lightbulb and saying:

“I heard that if you put one of these in your mouth, you can’t remove it afterwards. Isn’t that strange?”

“That _is_ strange,” Donna replies slowly.

The Doctor nods, and pops the lightbulb in his mouth. It happens within a split second, and she can only watch, frozen, as he tugs at the metal base with a muffled noise. It doesn’t come free, and Donna catches the briefest flash of panic across his face before he dashes back out.

Feeling like she’s in slow-motion, Donna turns to look at the doorway that the Doctor has just exited through, then back to the book in her hands. It takes a moment for the shock to pass, and the reality of the situation to register.

“Wait, Doctor!” The locked door of the bathroom does not reply, not even when she starts hammering frantically on the metal surface – not with an actual hammer, as the Doctor would do, but with both hands. 

She gives it up after five frustrating minutes, when the concern in her gradually melts into a cynical disbelief – does he even _want_ her help, or is this just a ploy for attention? Grumbling, she stalks back to her book.

The Doctor follows her into the living area after another measly five minutes, lightbulb nowhere to be seen and back to his garrulous, excitable self.

Donna interrupts him. “So you managed to get it out? Did you cut your mouth on all that glass, then?”

The Doctor stares. “What? No, don’t be silly, of course I didn’t break it.”

“Did you…” she begins, slowly, “unhinge your jaw?”

“I might not be human,” the Doctor laughs, “but I couldn’t possibly do that.”

She frowns, and all it takes is that split-second of silence for the Doctor to wrench the conversation out of her hands, and spin it back to something entirely unrelated. Donna almost wonders if the lightbulb had been nothing but a fevered midday hallucination.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://swummeng-geys.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/hashtag_yikes)


End file.
